Miitomo

Strangest Social Network

Yesterday is the day that Nintendo finally rolled out it’s My.Nintendo.Com rebranding of their account system. For years Nintendo has made some pretty confusing choices when it came to social connectivity in their applications. The obtuse friend code system in the 3DS was often times more trouble than it was really worth to connect up with your friends under most situations. The short lived Nintendo ID seemed to work better, but since I only recently purchased a Wii U I have not had a ton of experience with it other than accessing the eShop. “My Nintendo” is their new attempt at gluing together all of these old systems along with the social media that we actually use on a regular basis… namely Twitter, Google Plus, and Facebook… with what appears to be integration with Instagram and Line but these are not super intuitive. With this network they also rolled out a new app called Miitomo that attempts to be something along the lines of those street pass apps that let you play with your friends Mii avatars.

The only problem is… that the app refuses to work on my phone. They have chosen to block rooted phones from being able to use the network… which honestly accounts for a not insignificant portion of the android market share. The only problem here is… my phone isn’t rooted. At one point I absolutely unlocked root so I could run tethering apps, however since then I restored back to the factory settings. When you use any of the “root checker” programs my phone gets as clean bill of health, and Samsung KNOX is still showing a valid warranty so zero strikes there either. So for all purposes my phone is not rooted and the app should not be able to tell that it has EVER been rooted. However I am still encountering the same damned black screen and crash that rooted users seem to experience, so I am guessing somehow the Nintendo app still thinks I have a rooted device. The only problem here is… if my phone were actually rooted I could fix this problem easily by using cloaking software to keep the Miitomo app from seeing the root access. So honestly if I ever want to run this on my phone it is looking like I am going to have to redo the root and install Rootcloak… which sort of defeats the purpose doesn’t it Nintendo?

All of this said I did manage to get it to install on my Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, which in itself is a bit of a goofy situation given that this is not on the Amazon app store yet. If you also have the $50 Kindle, and would like to be using the Google Play store instead… check out this video that I used to install the play store and the related applications on my tablet because it doesn’t require root to actually make it happen. The only game I have yet to get to work on the Kindle is Final Fantasy Record Keeper and I am guessing if I did some digging I could probably make that work too. On the Miitomo front… I am not entirely certain I get it. I mean it is a very cute presentation and it allows me to dress my Mii up however I want. The only problem is I am not really seeing the point, other than earning nebulous rewards on the “My Nintendo” website like 15% off coupons. Once you get past the window dressing, what the app ultimately ends up being is a super cumbersome chat program that lets you comment on your friends status updates. If I could take items earned in this app and have it trickle down into the 3DS and Wii U then that would be really awesome, or if I could unlock extras for the games I am already playing… then that would be really cool. For the time being however it falls into the “nifty” bin but I am not sure how much myself or anyone else will really be using this once the new and cool factor wears off.

[Edit] – as of this morning I noticed there was a 1.1.2 update waiting on my phone. I tried that and sure enough it seems to have fixed the crash. I do have to admit this is a much better app for a phone than a tablet, so maybe I was overly harsh in my initial review. I am not sure if this actually fixes things for rooted users, but it fixed my problems.

Super Good Advice

I’ve been playing a silly amount of Iron Banner over the last few days, because I am finding that I really do enjoy PVP in Destiny. This is just such an odd revelation for me given that I have purposefully shied away from fighting other players in any other game. At least on some level it makes me wonder if I should dust off some of the other titles and give PVP a real chance to see if it sticks with me. I remember enjoying playing Arena in World of Warcraft during Burning Crusade, but in large part we were doing our matches to get epics… to help our characters in raiding. That is the most interesting thing for me is that I thought I was going into Iron Banner just for the loot, and while I have managed to get two of the chestpieces… that really doesn’t seem to be my core drive. I actually like playing the maps, and while there are some that I absolutely hate… several of them are beginning to feel extremely comfortable. The other thing that I find shocking is that I actually seem to be improving quite a bit. There have been a few matches where I topped the score for the entire match, which is something I find completely bizarro. I still consider myself a very shitty Destiny player.

I think my ultimate goal for this weekend is to be able to get up high enough in the ranking to start to see the weapon drops. I believe these start at rank 4 with the hand cannon, and rank 5 for the machine gun. Both of them are weapons that I would probably actually use, but I am more excited about the Hand Cannon right now for some reason. I miss using my Hand Cannon, and it feels like maybe this one would be a good legendary to run around with. I need to honestly just dust off my Hawkmoon and give it a go again… but the big problem that I always run into is the fact that I never seem to have enough ammunition. It is my huge hope that in the weapon re-balancing coming in the April patch that we see some love for the reserve ammunition size of the various Hand Cannon archetypes. For now my weapon of choice in the Crucible is the Antipodal Hindsight that I now have up to 303. There is just something about this weapon that I love, especially now that I have a roll on it with Rodeo. Seriously… Rodeo on any weapon will take it from crappy to completely viable for me at least. It is my hope that through today’s daily bounties I will hit rank 3 and get my first Iron Banner package.